“Oh yes,” said Val, relieved. He drew a step back, with a sense of having escaped. “I don’t really mind, you know, at all,” he said; “it was nothing but a joke. But I’ll come again with pleasure. I say, what have you done to that carving, Brown?”
How glad Val was to get away from her touch, and from her intent eyes! and yet he did not want to go away. He hastened to the other end of the room with Dick, who was glad also to find that the perplexing interview was at an end, and got out his bit of carving with great relief. Val stood for a long time (as they all thought) side by side with the other, laying their heads together, the light locks and the dark—talking both together, as boys do; and felt himself calm down, but with a sense that something strange had happened to him, something more than he could understand. The mother sat down on her chair, her limbs no longer able to sustain her. She was glad, too, that it was over—glad and sad, and so shaken with conflicting emotions, that she scarcely knew what was going on. Her heart sounded in her ears like great waves; and through a strange mist in her eyes, and the gathering twilight, she saw vaguely, dimly, the two beside her. Oh, if she could but have put her arms round them and kissed them both together! But she could not. She sat down silent among the shadows, a shadow herself, against the evening light, and saw them in a mist, and held her peace.
“You did not tell me your mother was a lady,” said Val, as the two went back together through the soft dusk to the river-side.
“I never knew it,” said wondering Dick; “I never thought it—till to-night.”
“Ah, but I am sure of it,” said Val. “I thought you couldn’t be a cad, Brown, or I should not have taken to you like this. She’s a lady, sure enough; and what’s more,” he added, with an embarrassed laugh, “I feel as if I had known her somewhere—before—I suppose, before I was born!”
CHAPTER XIX.
After this curious meeting, Val paid several visits to the little corner house; so many, indeed, that his tutor interfered, as he had a perfect right to do, and reproached him warmly for his love of low society, and for choosing companions who must inevitably do him harm. Mr Grinder was quite right in this, and I hope the tutors of all our boys would do exactly the same in such a case; but Val, I am afraid, did not behave so respectfully as he ought, and indeed was insubordinate and scarcely gentlemanly, Mr Grinder complained. The young tutor, who had been an Eton boy himself not so very long before, had inadvertently spoken of poor Dick as a “Brocas cad.” Now I am not sufficiently instructed to know what special ignominy, if any, is conveyed by this designation; but Val flamed up, as he did on rare occasions, his fury and indignation being all the greater that he usually managed to restrain himself. He spoke to Mr Grinder as a pupil ought not to have done. He informed him that if he knew Dick he never would venture to use such terms; and if he did not know him, he had no right to speak at all, not being in the least aware of the injustice he was doing. There was a pretty business altogether between the high-spirited impetuous boy and the young man who had been too lately a boy himself to have much patience with the other. Mr Grinder all but “complained of” Val—an awful proceeding, terminating in the block, and sudden execution in ordinary cases—a small matter enough with most boys, but sufficiently appalling to those who had attained such a position as Val’s, high up in school; and intolerable to his impetuous temperament. This terrible step was averted by the interposition of mediators, by the soft words of old Mr Grinder, who was Val’s “dame,” and other friends. But young Mr Grinder wrote a letter to Rosscraig on the subject, which gave Lady Eskside more distress and trouble than anything which had happened to her for a long time. If she had got her will, her husband would have gone up instantly to inquire into the matter, and it is possible that the identity of Dick and his mother might have been discovered at once, and some future complications spared. The old lady wrung her hands and wept salt tears over the idea that “his mother’s blood” was asserting itself thus, and that her son Richard’s story might be about to be repeated again, but with worse and deeper shades of misery. Lord Eskside, however, who had been so much disturbed by dangers which affected her very lightly, was not at all moved by this. He demurred completely to the idea of going to Eton, but agreed that Val himself should be written to, and explanations asked. Val wrote a very magnificent letter in reply, as fine a production as ever sixteen (but he was seventeen by this time) put forth. He related with dignity how he had encountered a friendly boy on the river’s side who helped him when his boat swamped—how he had discovered that he was an admirable fellow, supporting his old mother, and in want of work—how he had exerted himself to procure work for this deserving stranger, and how he had gone to his house two or three times to see how he was getting on. “I have been lending him books,” wrote Val, “and doing what I could to help him to get on. His master, who took him on my recommendation, and Lichen’s (you know Lichen? the captain of the boats), says he never had such a good man in his place; and I have thought it was my duty to help him on. If you and grandmamma think I ought not to do so,” Valentine concluded majestically, “I confess I shall be very sorry; for Brown is one of the best fellows that ever was born.”
Lady Eskside wept when she read this letter—tears of joy, and pride, and happy remorse at having thought badly of her boy. She wrote him such a letter as moved even Val’s boyish insensibility, with a ten-pound note in it, with which she intrusted him to buy something for his protégé. “It is like your sweet nature to try to help him,” she said; “and oh, Val, my darling, I am so ashamed of myself for having a momentary fear!” Mr Grinder had a somewhat cold response from Lord Eskside, but not so trenchant as my lady would have wished it. “We are very much obliged to you for your care,” said the old lord; “but I think Valentine has given such good reasons for his conduct that we must not be hard upon him. Of course nothing of this sort should be allowed to go too far.” Thus Val was victorious; but I am glad to have to tell of him that as soon as he was sure of this, he went off directly and begged Mr Grinder’s pardon. “I had no right, sir, to speak to you so,” said the boy. They were better friends ever after, I believe; and for a long time Lady Eskside was not troubled with any terrors about Val’s “mother’s blood!”
All this time Dick “got on” so, that it became a wonder to see him. He had finished Val’s carving long ago, and presented it to his gracious patron, declining with many blushes the “five bob” which he had been promised. Before he was eighteen, he had grown, in virtue of his absolute trustworthiness, to be the first and most important ministrant at the “rafts.” Everybody knew him, everybody liked him. So far as young squires and lordlings constitute that desirable thing, Dick lived in the very best society; his manners ought to have been good, for they were moulded on the manners of our flower of English youth. I am not very sure myself that he owed so much to this (for Eton boys, so far as I have seen, bear a quite extraordinary resemblance to other boys) as to his naturally sweet and genial temper, his honest and generous humbleness and unselfishness. Dick Brown was the very last person Dick thought of, whatever he might happen to be doing—and this is the rarest of all qualities in youth. Then he was so happy in having his way, and a “home,” and in overcoming his mother’s fancy for constant movement, that his work was delightful to him. It was hard work, and entailed a very long daily strain of his powers—too long, perhaps, for a growing boy—but yet it was pleasant, and united a kind of play with continuous exertion. All summer long he was on the river-side, the busiest of lads or men, in noiseless boating-shoes, and with a dress which continually improved till Dick became the nattiest as well as the handiest of his kind. He had a horror of everything that was ugly and dirty: when others lounged about in their hour’s rest, while their young clients were at school, Dick would be hot about something;—painting and rubbing the old boats, scraping the oars, bringing cleanness, and order, and that bold kind of decoration which belongs to boat-building, to the resuscitation of old gigs and “tubs” which had seemed good for nothing. He would even look after the flowers in the little strip of garden, and sow the seeds, and trim the border, while he waited, if there happened to be no old boats to cobble. He was happy when the sun shone upon nothing but orderliness and (as he felt it) beauty.
In his own rooms this quality of mind was still more apparent. I have said that he and his mother lived with Spartan simplicity. This enabled him to do a great deal more with his wages than his more luxurious companions. First, comforts, and then superfluities—elegances, if we may use the word—began to flow into the room. The elegances, perhaps, were not very elegant at first, but his taste improved at the most rapid rate. When he had nothing better to do, he would go and take counsel with Fullady the wood-carver, and get lessons from him, helping now and then at a piece of work, to the astonishment of his master. In the evening he carved small pieces of furniture, with which he decorated his dwelling. In winter he was initiated into the mysteries of boat-building, and worked at this trade with absolute devotion and real enjoyment. In short, Dick’s opinion was that nobody so happy as himself had ever lived—his work was as good as play, and better, he thought; and he was paid for doing what it gave him the greatest pleasure to do—a perennial joke with the gentle fellow. In all this prosperity Dick never forgot his first patron. When Val rowed, Dick ran by the bank shouting till he was hoarse. When Val was preferred to be one of the sublime Eight, who are as gods among men, he went almost out of his wits with pride and joy. “We’ll win now, sure enough, at Henley!” he said to his mother, with unconscious appropriation of the possessive pronoun. But when Dick heard of the squabble between Val and his tutor, his good sense showed at once. He took his young patron a step aside, taking off his hat with almost an exaggeration of respect—“Don’t come to our house again, sir,” he said; “the gentleman is in the right. You are very kind to be so free with me, to talk and make me almost a friend; but it wouldn’t do if every Eton gentleman were to make friends with the fellows on the water-side—the gentleman is in the right.”